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Partying with Green Lantern

With the first live-action Green Lantern movie hitting theaters in less than a week, what better time to introduce a bunch of kids to the character?

About two weeks before school ended for my daughter, I sent a stack of invitations with her to pass out to her classmates. On the front was Hal Jordan, the title character of the new Green Lantern movie along with the words, “Party”, “Snacks”, “Fun” and “Games”. I thought for sure the kids would be into it, and whatta’ya’know, ten kids showed up at our house last Saturday at 2pm!

Thanks to BSM Media and Mattel, I had some excellent Green Lantern toys to give to the kids. The favorite toy – by far – was the Green Lantern Colossal Cannon Blaster. The cannon lights up and fires small, green plastic discs (not very hard!) that kids can aim at objects. You hear that, kiddos? Objects. You don’t aim it at your sister, your brother, or anyone else. They don’t fire hard, but you could put out an eye with those things. Geez, did I just say that? What am I, an old man? Sheesh.

The kids had a great time setting up stacks of paper cups and shooting the little discs at them.

In addition to the cannon, I had a Green Lantern Battle Shifters action figure to give to each kid. These 4″ figures feature transformable “constructs” that mimic the powers of the Green Lantern ring. And speaking of rings, each child took home a special light-up Green Lantern ring (perfectly sized for kid fingers, unfortunately. I didn’t get to wear one).

In addition to the toys, the company sent two things that didn’t really work for our party because of the age of the kids. For a party made up of older kids, they would have been fantastic, but our age group was 5-6 year olds. The first item was the Green Lantern: First Flight DVD (pictured), which I absolutely love. I’ve owned it since the day of release, and it’s one of my favorite comic book animated films – but it’s rated PG-13 with good reason. I couldn’t screen it at our party, so I put on some old episodes of Super Friends that featured Green Lantern (which, yes, I also own on DVD. I’m a comics geek, this is what we do). That went home with my daughter’s teacher, whose husband direly wished he could be at the party, being a comics geek himself. The other item sent was Green Lantern: Secret Origin, a hardcover collection of Green Lantern comics. It’s a wonderful story, but again, not age-appropriate for the party. If comics had movie ratings, it too would be PG-13. Eleven copies were sent in the party box – keep an eye on QAQN because with the launch of my new Waiting for Wednesday comics show, I’ll be giving them away to lucky listeners!